A woman who claims to have had an illicit relationship with Steven Tyler inthe Seventies when she was a minor has filed a lawsuit against the Aerosmithsinger, accusing him of sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentionalinfluence of emotional distress. The lawsuit was filed following Californialegislation that temporarily waived statutes of limitations for childhoodsexual abuse allegations.
In the suit filed in Los Angeles and obtained by Rollingstone , theplaintiff Julia Holcomb alleges that Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to granthim guardianship over her when she was 16 years old, which consequentlyallowed her to live with him and engage in a sexual relationship. She claimsthey were together from 1973 until about three years later. The suit itselfdoesn’t name Tyler, naming the defendants as Defendant Doe 1 and Does 2through 50. But Holcomb — who Rollingstone mentioned in a 1976 profile ofthe band in reference to Tyler’s romantic life — has been public about herexperience with Tyler in the past, and the lawsuit directly quotes fromTyler’s own memoir. In his book, without stating a name, Tyler similarly sayshe “almost took a teen bride” and that “her parents fell in love with me,signed a paper over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if Itook her out of state. I took her on tour with me.”
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In the suit, Holcomb alleges that she “was powerless to resist” Tyler’s“power, fame and substantial financial ability, and that Tyler “coerced andpersuaded Plaintiff into believing this was a ‘romantic love affair’”. Holcomballeges that she met Tyler (who would’ve been 25 at the time of their meeting)just after her 16th birthday when Aerosmith played a concert in Portland,Oregon, in 1973. Tyler, according to the suit, took Holcomb back to his hotelroom, where they discussed Holcomb’s age. After he allegedly asked why she wasout all night by herself, Tyler and Holcomb talked about her troubles at home.He then “performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct upon” her beforesending her home in a taxi the next morning, the lawsuit states.
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Tyler also allegedly bought Holcomb her own plane ticket to his next Aerosmithshow in Seattle since she was a minor and could not legally travel with himacross state lines, the suit says. After the Seattle show, Tyler allegedlyperformed more sexual acts on her, and Holcomb flew back to Portland the nextmorning.
By 1974, as the suit alleges, Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to allow him tobecome her guardian, which would allow him to more easily travel with herwithout criminal prosecution — a timeline that matches Tyler’s own commentsfrom his 2011 memoir. Tyler allegedly told Holcomb’s mother he would providebetter support than she was getting at home, promising to enroll her in schooland give her medical care. Tyler “did not meaningfully follow through on thesepromises and instead continued to travel with, assault and provide alcohol anddrugs to Plaintiff,” the suit claims.
Holcomb further alleges that she was pregnant with Tyler’s son in 1975 whenshe was 17 years old but got an abortion after Tyler insisted she terminatethe pregnancy following an apartment fire. In making the argument, he citedsmoke inhalation and lack of oxygen to the baby. Though the suit claims amedical professional told her the unborn baby was not harmed by the fire.
According to the lawsuit, Holcomb was hesitant about going through with theabortion, but Tyler had threatened to stop supporting her if she didn’tproceed with the procedure. After the abortion, she allegedly left Tyler andwent back to Portland to change her life. She became a devout Catholic, withher husband, and buried her previous experiences with Tyler until he wroteabout them in his book.
Holcomb says in the suit that her life was further disrupted with thepublication of Tyler’s memoir, which, without Holcomb’s consent, referencedhis time with an underage girl and subjected her to “involuntary infamy” whileframing the alleged abuse as a “romantic, loving relationship,” the suit says.Tyler has also spoken of a relationship with an underage girl both in his ownmemoir and in Aerosmith’s autobiography. The Aerosmith autobiography,published in 1997, references the relationship, the apartment fire, andabortion, but Tyler refers to the girl as Diana and said she was 14 at thetime they met. In his memoir, however, he says she was 16, and he writes aboutthe fire but not the abortion. In the suit, Holcomb says she’s mentioned inthe memoir’s acknowledgments which further removed her anonymity. (The book’sacknowledgments include Julia Halcomb which could be a misspelling of hername.)
“She was sixteen, she knew how to be nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,”Tyler wrote in his memoir before saying he became the girl’s guardian to avoidgetting arrested if he took her out of state before detailing their sexualendeavors a few pages later. “With my bad self being twenty-six and she barelyold enough to drive and sexy as hell, I just fell madly in love with her. Shewas a cute skinny little tomboy dressed up as Little Bo Peep. She was myheart’s desire, my partner in crimes of passion.”
The lawsuit isn’t the first time Holcomb has shared these details about heralleged experience with Tyler. Prior to the complaint, she detailed many ofthe same allegations in 2011 for the far-right, anti-abortion websiteLifesitenews, and she has gone on programs like Tucker Carlson’s show to shareher experience as fodder against pro-choice advocacy. Holcomb also spoke ofthe experience in the 2021 documentary Look Away, which focused on sexualabuse in rock music culture.
“I became lost in a rock and roll culture. In Steven’s world it was sex,drugs, and rock and roll, but it seemed no less chaotic than the world I leftbehind. I didn’t know it yet, but I would barely make it out alive,” Holcombwrote in 2011. “I couldn’t believe he was even asking me to have an abortionat this stage. He spent over an hour pressing me to go ahead and have theabortion. He said that I was too young to have a baby and it would have braindamage because I had been in the fire and taken drugs. “
Holcomb’s suit comes in the final days of California’s Child Victims Act, a2019 piece of legislation that lifted the statute of limitations and granted athree-year lookback period for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to comeforward with their allegations. The deadline to file a lawsuit is December 31,2022.
A rep for Tyler did not immediately respond to Rollingstone ‘s request forcomments.
New York has similar legislation with the Adult Survivors Act, giving NewYorkers a year to file lawsuits over sexual misconduct they allegedlyexperienced in adulthood, regardless of when the claimed incident occurred.Since taking effect last month, two women have accused the late recordexecutive Ahmet Ertegun of sexual assault in the 1980s and 1990s. Californiaalso passed legislation lifting the statute of limitations on adult sexualabuse cases for a year starting on January 1st, 2023.
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